


In Vino Veritas

by Chash



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 11:47:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5868124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>BFF fill for the promp: Raven gets drunk and accidentally blurts out Clarke has feelings for Bellamy in front of everyone Clarke avoids Bellamy and later he confronts her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Vino Veritas

Bellamy and Octavia don't Voltron their friend groups that often.

"It's because you use _Voltron_ as a verb," O says, rolling her eyes. "Who wants to hang out with someone who uses Voltron as a verb?"

"So what you're saying is that your friends aren't cool enough for me," he says, and she rolls her eyes. "I get it. My students tell me I can be intimidating."

"Voltron is a perfectly cromulent verb," says Raven, and Bellamy raises his glass to her with a solemn nod.

Raven is the reason he's out with them tonight, or Raven by way of Clarke. They're the two members of Octavia's friend group he's closest to, and, in general, when Clarke asks him to do things, he does them. Mostly because she asks him for reasonable, easy things, like coming out to cheer Raven up after a bad breakup. And because she's the one asking.

 _She needs quantity over quality right now_ , Clarke had texted, and he replied, _Thanks for saying I'm not quality_ and asked when she wanted him to show up before she could reply to that.

Since the outing is a quantity thing, he's brought some friends of his own, to fill out the group: Miller and Roma, who generally get along with Raven, and Murphy, who doesn't, but argues with her in a way that's fairly helpful. Raven's way of feeling better generally involves a lot drinking, arguing, and pop-culture references.

Hence Voltron as a verb. Bellamy is _helping_.

And, not that he's an expert, but Raven seems to be doing all right. He knows, from Octavia, that both she and Clarke have rocky histories with relationships in general, and he even slept with her once, after the worst of the rocky relationships, which involved her and Clarke dating the same guy, and dumping him, and a lot of drunkenness all around. That seems to be how Raven deals with most things. Bellamy can relate.

But he's a little worried that's why Clarke wanted him to come out tonight. Not that he's, as a general rule, opposed to sleeping with beautiful women, especially ones he's already slept with and enjoyed sleeping with. But he doesn't really want that to be why Clarke asked him to join them. He thinks he's probably not going to sleep with Raven again. All things considered.

It's then that Clarke slumps down next to him, looking exhausted and irritated, with snowflakes in her hair, her cheeks chapped from cold. He doesn't perk up, because he wasn't waiting for her, wondering why she wasn't around yet. But he does smile.

"Finally!" says Raven, shoving her drink at Clarke. "You're so far behind on drinking, dude."

Clarke flashes her a tired grin and finishes off the gin and tonic. "I know, I know, I'm sorry. My fucking asshole boss gave me something that had to be finished today. At _five_. If I didn't get overtime, I'd murder him."

"You should maybe murder him anyway," says Octavia. "Raven, you need another drink. Clarke, I assume you want one too?"

"Cider would be great, thanks, O." She nudges Bellamy's shoulder, offers him a smile, her first acknowledgement of him. "Hey, I see you guys made it."

"You know us, give us a place where we can drink and we'll show up. Sorry your boss is a dick."

"It's cool. I get paid a ridiculous amount of money and when I eventually kill him, I think I can make it look like an accident." Octavia comes back with more drinks, and Clarke accepts hers and drinks deeply. "Okay, enough about me. My boss is a dick, no big deal. Let's talk about something else. Raven, do we have phone trivia or something?"

"Smooth subject change," Raven says, but she loves weird phone games, so of course she's got one lined up. It's possible she _always_ has one lined up.

Bellamy does _like_ his sister's friends. If they weren't his sister's friends, he'd probably hang out with them a lot more often, but some part of him still feels like a weird, kind of sad hanger-on when he goes out with Octavia, like he can't manage a social life of his own. And he can. He does.

There are just parts of Octavia's social life he really likes. Exhibit A being Clarke Griffin, half asleep against his side.

"Your boss really sucks, huh?" he asks her, soft and too fond. The bar is busy around them, but it's easy to pretend it's just him and her. No one else is paying attention.

"Long week," she says. "We don't have to talk about it. Tonight is about Raven."

"I think Raven's fine. Your friend Wells is talking to her, she looks pretty happy."

Clarke struggles to sit upright; she's not that drunk, but between the weariness and the alcohol, she's clearly hit hard. He tries not to think she's cute and totally fails.

He probably shouldn't drink any more either.

"I told him to wait," she says, but she sounds fond and amused. "He never listens to me."

"Wait?"

"Raven always rebounds. As _you_ know. Wells needs to not be a rebound. He's really into her." She stands and stretches. "I'm gonna go run--interference sounds bad. I'm not being a dick, I promise. Just, you know. They'd be great together, I don't want them to screw it up."

"That's not really your job," he says, but he doubts he can talk her out of it.

"I know, but if they destroy my social circle, I will have to murder them, so I feel okay about it. Get me another drink?"

"Yeah, but only because I'm hoping you pass out before _you_ destroy your social circle."

"I'm fine with that," she says, and goes to plop herself down next to Raven, resting her head on her shoulder instead of Bellamy's. He's not jealous, he tells himself, watching them from the bar. Clarke likes to support herself on people when she's drunk. She doesn't have to support herself on him.

"You know, if you just asked her on a date, you wouldn't have this problem," Lincoln observes. Bellamy is not really drunk enough to be getting romantic advice from his sister's boyfriend, so he just gives him an unimpressed look. Lincoln shrugs, placid. "Octavia finds your excuses for why you want to hang out with her increasingly suspicious." He pauses. "By which I mean she thinks you're absurd, as usual."

"She's a smart girl," Bellamy says. The bartender slides him two more drinks, and he accepts them. "Good talk," he tells Lincoln. "Really inspirational. Appreciated."

He makes it sarcastic because that's how he is, but he really _does_ appreciate it. Lincoln was Clarke's friend before he was Octavia's boyfriend; Clarke introduced them. So he probably cares more about Clarke than Bellamy, and he wouldn't tell Bellamy to ask her out if he thought it was going to upset her. It's a nice thing to think about, for later.

But then, as he's navigating back to Clarke and Raven, he hears Raven saying, somewhat miserably, "Ordinarily, I'd just sleep with Bellamy."

"Ordinarily?" Wells asks. He sounds amused, not upset.

"Yeah, you slept with him _once_ , that doesn't make it a habitual thing," Clarke says, and then, "It was just once, right?"

"This is what I'm saying," Raven says, too loud. She's _really_ drunk. "I _would_ just sleep with him, but Clarke is in love with him, so now he's out. Bro code. Or whatever. Sleeping with Octavia's brother was bad, sleeping with Octavia's brother who Clarke's also in love with is, like--next level."

There's a loud, jarring noise, and Bellamy realizes he dropped the bottle he was holding, and everyone is looking at him. Or at least everyone who's sober enough to recognize sounds and where they come from is, at least.

The bottle didn't break, at least, but Clarke is staring at him in clear horror, so he can't look away to try to clean it up or anything. He's not sure what to do. He can't blame her for looking horrified--if it happened to him, he'd probably be horrified too--but it's not really horrific, if it's true.

It's not a big deal to most of the rest of the bar, of course. It only feels like the whole world stops. In reality, the whole world doesn't even pause. The sound of the bottle got more attention than Raven did, and she's still talking, oblivious, even though Bellamy can't really process what she's saying anymore.

Someone plows into him, drunk and off balance, and he nearly spills the cider he's still holding for Clarke, barely catches himself in time to stay upright. The guy starts yelling at him like it's his fault, because now is definitely the time for him to get into a bar fight. That's just perfect.

By the time he's extricated himself from the situation, Clarke is gone, and he slumps down next to Wells.

"She left?"

"Can you blame her?"

"Yes," he says, scowling at nothing. "I wanted to talk to her."

"If only you had her number or knew where she lives," Wells says, sharp, and Bellamy startles. Wells tends to be nice and laid back; fierce is a new look for him. "If you want to talk to her, you can, but if you--" He huffs. "Don't hurt her."

"I won't," he promises. "You got her?" he asks, jerking his head at Raven, who has gotten distracted from whatever she was ranting about by her phone.

"Yeah."

"Cool. Then I'm gonna--yeah."

"Good," says Wells. "Don't fuck it up."

Clarke lives with Octavia, only a few blocks from the bar, which is why it's their favorite bar. Bellamy's been to the apartment dozens of times, would know the way even much drunker than he is, but he still finds himself watching his feet, trying to see if he can see Clarke's boot marks in the snow.

His eye finds their window automatically, second floor, the middle two, but they're dark, and he wonders how long it's been since Clarke left. He's not sure how long it took him to get out of fighting that dude, how much of a head start she got. She's probably not actually asleep, she's probably avoiding him, but if she _did_ just come home, faceplant into her bed, and pass out, he doesn't want to wake her.

He texts, _Hey, I'm outside, let me up?_ and waits ten minutes, until he starts losing feeling in his nose and ears, before he has to admit she's not coming down. _I'm going to assume you're asleep. Call me tomorrow. Or I'll call you. Drink a lot of water and eat something greasy in the morning._

He nearly adds something like _I love you too_ or _I don't mind_ , but it feels like he shouldn't say that over text. And Raven might have been wrong, even if Wells seemed to think Bellamy could break her heart too. He wants to see her first.

He checks the apartment one more time, to make sure it's still dark, and sighs, stuffs his hands into his pockets, and takes himself home.

In the morning, he texts her twice, and then feels like kind of a dick for pressuring her, and then gets annoyed at himself for feeling like a dick, because _she's_ definitely the dick here. Not that he's surprised, or even blames her, exactly. He knows Clarke, and he's guessing last night she went home and pretended to be asleep because she was drunk and embarrassed, and now she doesn't know what to say to him, because she's not drunk, but she's more embarrassed for not talking to him in the first place. And that's only going to get worse, the longer she puts off talking to him, but she hasn't figured out how to do it yet.

Which sucks, because if she'd just get it over with, they could be making out right now. Assuming Raven was right.

At two, he calls Octavia.

"What," she says, flat. She's so great at the phone.

"Is your roommate home?"

"How would I know? I'm at Lincoln's. Have you considered calling her? I don't want to be your weird go-between, Bell, just suck it up and talk to her yourself."

"I'm _trying_ ," he growls, and rubs his face. "Do you remember what happened last night?"

"Not really. Did you confess your undying love and now she won't talk to you?"

"Other way around. Or--Raven confessed her undying love for me. Clarke's, I mean. And she left and she won't talk to me, so--"

There's a long pause, and then he hears Octavia yell, "Lincoln!" She covers the phone after that, so he knows that they are having some kind of hushed conversation, and then his sister comes back and says, "You know you have a key to our apartment, right?"

"I'm already breaking in and making her talk to me? That feels kind of extreme."

"It's not breaking in. You have a key."

"Thanks, that was my real issue." He scrubs his face. "Was Raven right? Or is she avoiding me because she doesn't want to hurt my feelings?" Octavia doesn't respond, but in the pointed kind of way, and he sighs. "You can tell me. I'm going to talk to her anyway, I just want to be prepared if I'm gonna get my heart broken."

"You're my brother, we don't exactly do girl-talk about you," she huffs. "It would be weird. But I assume if she's gonna girl-talk about you with anyone, it's Raven, so--I'd trust her judgement over mine. And it's not like she's telling me she's into other people."

He lets out a breath. "Okay, yeah. Uh--thanks, O."

"You're pathetic," she says. "Tell me if I shouldn't come home tonight."

Clarke and Octavia's apartment is ten-minute bus ride from his, which would be a lot more convenient if the bus came more than once every half an hour on Sundays, but he manages to throw some clothes on and grab all his stuff in time to catch the one that's just about to leave, at least. He sends her a text when he's most of the way there to say, _I'm coming over and I have a key. Just warning you._ She doesn't really have enough time to evacuate, but she can get dressed or something if she's in her pajamas, and he's not actually ambushing her.

When he knocks, she opens the door, gives him a sheepish smile. "That wasn't my most mature reaction to a situation," she says.

He snorts. "I liked the part where you pretended to be asleep last night. That was a nice touch."

"You looked like someone slapped you," she says, a hint of defensiveness in her voice.

"If it helps, someone tried after you left." He rubs the back of his neck. "Can I come in?"

"Yeah," she says, stepping out of the way. She's wearing pajama pants, an old t-shirt, and her glasses, which he assumes means she's too hungover to think about putting in contacts. He smiles at her again, gentle, and she flushes. "We can skip the part where you let me down easy and just go back to pretending I don't have a thing for you. I was hoping if I just--"

"No," he says, laughing, short and incredulous. "Clarke, no. That's not why I wanted to talk to you."

She tucks a few strands of hair behind her ear, looking up at him, calculating. "You never want to hang out," she says, accusatory. "I have to come up with excuses."

"I hang out every time _you_ ask," he says. "I just feel sad following O around. Especially when I'm just doing it to see you. Which I am, like, all the time. Hanging out with your little sister to hit on her friends is pathetic, right?"

She's biting back on her smile now, he can tell. "Totally pathetic. Not as pathetic as avoiding a guy so he can't turn you down when he wasn't even going to turn you down, though."

His hand slides up to cup her jaw, and he's leaning down, eyes closing, when he remembers to ask, "How hungover are you?"

"Not nearly hungover enough that I don't want to make out," she says, and pulls him the rest of the way down to her lips.

He's already at Octavia's apartment the next time they're going to the bar, Clarke tucked into his side while they watch Netflix, and O pretends to be upset about it.

"You're gonna hang out all the time now, aren't you?"

"Don't think of it as hanging out with your dorky brother," he consoles her. "Think of it as hanging out with your roommate's boyfriend who you don't really like very much."

" _So_ much better," says O, and Bellamy puts her in a headlock on their way out.

Raven's there when they arrive, wedged into a booth with Monty and Wells, and Clarke's first move is to steal her drink. "You can't be trusted with alcohol," she says.

Raven rolls her eyes. " _I'm Clarke_ ," she says, in an exaggerated and completely inaccurate falsetto. " _I'm taking Raven's booze because she got me a hot boyfriend and I don't know how to show my appreciation for her._ "

Clarke seems to consider this, and then nods, returns Raven's drink, and pecks her on the cheek. "You're the best, thanks."

"There we go."

"I'll buy your next round," Bellamy says. "For, like, the next _year_."

"See? That's how you express gratitude," Raven says, raising her glass to Bellamy. "Good job, Bellamy. Appropriate amounts of appreciation."

Clarke tucks herself back into his side, leaning her head against his shoulder, and Bellamy smiles. He's not sure there are enough rounds in the world to pay Raven back for this one.

There's only one way to find out.


End file.
